The “day without women” really rubbed me the wrong way, more so than the average protest. I think for me personally, part of it is there are things that “card-carrying” feminists, even 21st century ones, say which I sort of agree with, but they nearly always drag politics into it, not to mention tying together unrelated issues… That said, to the extent that I actually saw someone talking about going on “strike”, they didn’t even pay lip service to stay at home mothers (and they specifically were mentioning cases where women couldn’t take the day off)… I would have cynically gotten involved if someone was offering free babysitting for the day. (C’mon, Soros, show me some love!)

I honestly haven’t been paying attention to it. It just seems like a less-effective version of Day Without Immigrants. Like, Immigrants can go back to their home countries. Where are feminists going to go? Quit their jobs and hang out at home, expecting their husbands to support them? The whole business is really dumb.

Even with the Day Without Immigrants, what got me was that (with, perhaps, a few hardcore libertarian exceptions) the people making a deal about it were the same types who’d say we shouldn’t worry about the effects of a $15/hour minimum wage… I mean, the high-end restaurants have some wiggle-room on their prices, and the fast food joints can put in a few more self-serve kiosks, and, yeah, more people will pack a lunch from home rather than paying $9 for an artisinal burrito. So what?

Honestly, I’m not bothered by immigrants in the abstract, and many specific ones I like (although I also know them well enough not to engage in any hagiography.) but the lack of advocates thinking logistics and demographics through, and the double standards galore (why does Mexico get a pass when it comes to accepting poor people from Central America?…), among other things, have made me a bit more skeptical…

This morning, I had one of those “Did you really mean what you said there?” moments reading an editorial in the Boston Globe… The writer was complaining about the New Hampshire governor blaming the city of Lawrence, Mass for NH’s opioid problem. The writer said how cities don’t cause problems, cultures do…

Um… Lawrence is 80% Hispanic.

(I’ll leave my conclusion as an exercise to be worked out by the reader…)

Now that I’ve googled the story, it seems that Gov. Sununu specifically mentioned Lawrence being a sanctuary city. (I immediately noticed that nearby Lowell doesn’t seem to get much blame, even though it’s also an old mill town and also has a large immigrant community, but in that case, it’s mostly Cambodian… It’s almost like demographics matter…)